


Warm Hands, Cold Heart

by SylvanWitch



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom, Transporter: The Series
Genre: Angst, Crossover, M/M, Post-Skyfall, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 12:32:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s seventy in Port Maria, but Bond hasn’t been warm since he burst from the ice on a Scottish bog.  Frank Martin can maybe help with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warm Hands, Cold Heart

**Author's Note:**

> In an episode of _Transporter: The Series_ the villain of the week says to Frank Martin, "You think you're James Bond." Frank responds, "Bond has smarter villains." And I said, "Ah-ha!" and a story was born.

It’s seventy in Port Maria, but Bond hasn’t been warm since he burst from the ice on a Scottish bog.

 

He’d stood in the smoke of his childhood home, felt the heat of its burning like the breath of an anemic dragon, all threat, no danger of burning or even warming him.  The only sensation in his freezing fingers had been the lingering feeling of the cold clay of M’s face against them.

 

As soon as the others had finished making a spectacle of her with their violating lights and incessant questions and had zipped her in crackling plastic and loaded her into the lorry, he’d liberated one of the local police cars and made his escape.

 

He’d come here because Jamaica meant blue water and white sand, palms whispering their secrets in the darkness as the undertaker’s wind caressed them.  He’d thought he could be warm again in the blazing sunlight and that the ghosts that hunted him at night would be better here for being older, faded by the passage of time and too much death.

 

And he’d come because the only person who’d know to look for him here was dead.

 

Bond has lost track of the bottles he’s drunk and the number of women who’ve approached him, only to be driven off by his expression.

 

Blessedly, there’s no mirror over the bar, so he can’t see what had frightened them, but he knows that the alcohol isn’t working its usual magic or he’d be numb by now, and his eyes would be flat but his smile inviting, and he wouldn’t be alone or upright, though there might still be sand stuck between his first two toes and the thong of his sandal.

 

He’s half-heartedly contemplating the allegory hidden in the constant irritation of those tiny grains when movement catches him out and he startles, turning too abruptly toward the shadow taking up his near sight, blurred at this proximity and by inebriation.

 

To his horror, Bond discovers that his typical balance has abandoned him, and as he lists alarmingly into the looming shadow, a hand wraps around his bicep and steadies him.

 

The heat of the touch shocks through him as if he’d come in contact with a live wire, and he tenses even as the shadow releases him, a pleasant voice saying, “Steady on,” before retreating to a more visible distance.

 

“Frank,” the man says before Bond can muster an opening line, and he settles for, “James,” in return, forgoing the surname for its associations with cold stone and chapels and gutted ruins.

 

Frank is wearing a white dress shirt with the cuffs rolled back, and the first detail Bond notices is the way the tendons in his wrist slide as he grips a bottle.  As if following the motion of the beer he’s downing, Bond watches the smooth slide of Frank’s throat, dips his eyes into the opening at the top of his shirt, one button undone, crisp pale hairs glinting gold in the glow of barlight.

 

He’s lean but strong, the hint of definition where his shirt shifts against his chest stirring an unwelcome reaction in Bond’s belly.  There are lines around Frank’s eyes that suggest he’s spent a lot of time staring into the glare, and a familiar callus on his right forefinger douses some of Bond’s initial ardor.  _Sniper_ , he thinks.

 

“Are you on the job?” he asks, skipping the subterfuge.  He’s tired, tired beyond the fugue of alcohol or the drag of miles and hours spent chasing peace.  If this man called Frank has come to kill Bond, he doesn’t want to waste time about it; he wants it to be done, over.

“Just finished one,” Frank answers, a suggestion of humor in his tone, a ghost of a smirk teasing his attractive mouth.  “You?” 

 

“No.”  A word that short shouldn’t be so weighted, but somehow it is, and Frank quirks up an eyebrow, signaling with his trigger finger to order another round for the two of them.

 

“Christ, you’re not actually drinking that, are you?”

 

It takes Bond far too long to understand that Frank is indicating the bottom shelf tequila the bartender has just poured into Bond’s smudged glass, and before he can answer, the other man slides the glass down the bar, away from him.  “I wouldn’t respect myself in the morning if I let you drink anymore of that shit.  Let me buy you a real drink?”

 

Bond might have been slow to grasp Frank’s meaning about the rotgut, but he’d have to be unconscious to misunderstand what Frank’s saying now.  Frank isn’t worried about Bond’s taste in liquor.

 

“Look, I’m not really inter—,” he begins wearily, but Frank cuts him off.  “Just a drink.”

 

“Fine.” There’s nothing inviting about Bond’s tone, but Frank smiles as though he’d just won something and orders two fingers of scotch from a dusty bottle on the top shelf.

 

The scent of peat and home usually soothes Bond, but this time it only reminds him of smoke, and the scotch tastes like ashes on his tongue.  He puts the glass down, the remaining liquid roiling slickly against the glass as he pushes it toward Frank.

 

“Too rich for you?”

 

Bond’s laugh is bereft of humor.  “A poor substitute,” he answers.

 

Frank’s eyebrow notches skyward again.  “Really?”  There’s no mistaking the challenge in his voice.

 

Bond shakes his head, lacking the energy to explain and suddenly tired of the foreplay.

 

“I should go,” he says, standing with a hand on the bar to steady the way the floor seems to swim beneath his feet.

 

“Let me drive you.”

 

Bond fixes him with an appraising gaze.  He thought he’d made it amply evident that he wasn’t interested in company of the sort Frank seems to be offering.  So what does the man really want?

 

He watches Frank’s economy of motion as he pulls bills from a clip and drops them on the bar, tips the bottle back to drain the last drops of beer, sets it down again, and turns toward Bond.  Frank is, Bond realizes, hyper-aware.  He makes every motion appear casual, but in fact he’s got contingencies planned if Bond lunges at him or the bartender pulls a shotgun from beneath the bar or a block of frozen urine plunges through the roof as a passenger jet makes its ignorant way through the night sky.

 

But when Bond’s eyes return to Frank’s face, the man is wearing only a pleasant expression that gives nothing away, an expression Bond realizes he’s seen before, but not on mercs or government assassins.

 

He’s seen it, he thinks, on chauffeurs.   It’s the bland smile in the rearview as Bond slides his hand up a woman’s skirt and she squeals in mock-protest.   It’s the polite tolerance of the servant class for the scandalous behavior of their temporary masters.

 

Yet he can’t reconcile Frank’s see-no-evil smile with his lethal grace as he moves towards the door ahead of Bond and holds it open for him.

 

Bond has encountered big cats in the wild once or twice, most memorably on an otherwise forgettable mission to India, and Frank reminds him of the kind of predator that projects imminent death even when not actively on the prowl.

 

Even if grief and exhaustion had dulled Bond’s sense of self-preservation and alcohol further eroded it, he would never let a man like Frank get behind him, and he allows that thought to filter into the look he gives the other man now.

 

Frank chuffs out a quiet laugh, drops his head as if acknowledging the rightness of Bond’s thinking, and moves through the open door himself, calling over his shoulder, “Offer’s still open for a ride,” as the door closes behind him.

 

Over his years as a secret agent, Bond has been accused of recklessness by everyone from girls in the secretarial pool to several incarnations of Q and M.  He’s been called impulsive and rash, been labeled by shrinks as having a death wish and by surgeons as owning the luck of the Devil.

 

He’s done many, many things in his life that others have regarded as unnecessarily risky but that by his own private calculus have been merely complex—byzantine variables balanced by available resources and equalized by his own skill and experience.

 

By his own math, Bond is doing something eminently stupid by following Frank out into the breezy night, yet he does so without any but the minutest hesitations. 

 

The breeze shivers in the nearby palms, inciting a susurrus that sounds, to Bond’s sensitive ears, like voices whispering warning, but he ignores the frisson of unease shifting the skin on his back and walks toward Frank, who’s leaning casually against the driver’s side fender of a sleek, black, late-model Audi that is as understated and potentially dangerous as its driver.

 

“So you _are_ a chauffeur?” Bond asks, taking the offensive for the moment.

 

Frank laughs again, though a downward turn of his lips, visible in the light of the nearly full moon splashing points of bright and dark across them both, suggests that he isn’t really amused.

 

“Transporter,” he corrects, and Bond nods, some anomalies starting to fall into place. 

 

Most men, even men in Bond’s line of work, would be relieved to learn that Frank’s chief livelihood isn’t murder for hire, but Bond isn’t most men, and he’s well aware that there’s more to Frank than excellent reflexes on the gearshift.

 

“And before that?”  Bond asks it lightly, as though he isn’t requiring Frank to reveal something intimate, something he doesn’t share even with people he likes and perhaps trusts, never mind near strangers he’s just acquired in a seedy bar in a Jamaican backwater.

 

“Special Forces,” Frank answers, his tone prohibiting further probing.  He tilts his head to one side, eyes daring Bond to push further.

 

Bond’s Gallic shrug is calculated to piss Frank off, but if it has that effect, Frank doesn’t show it.  He pushes off from the fender languidly and opens the driver’s side door, canting his head toward the passenger side in dumb invitation.

 

 _Get in or stay here, your choice_ , the gesture says.

 

Bond gets in.

 

The interior is deafeningly quiet after the constant background of wind and waves to which he’s already become acclimated.  In the bluish cast of the ceiling light, Bond notices that the dash of the car sports an elegant array of electronics, few of which are factory standard.

 

Fleetingly, he imagines young Q’s face crimped in curiosity as he avidly assesses the Audi’s instruments.  Unsettled by the memory of the new Q and his old life, Bond turns his attention to Frank’s strong fingers as they punch in a code, carefully obscuring the keypad from Bond’s sight.  The car thrums to life, a subtle vibration of leashed speed that draws a sympathetic hum of energy from Bond, who has always loved fast cars.

 

“Where are you taking me?”  The words suggest a surrender that neither of them believe Bond actually feels.

 

“Home.  Yours.”

 

“Confident, aren’t you?”

 

“About you?”  Frank graces him with a crooked, knowing smile.  “Yes.”

 

“I told you I wasn’t interested in a…ride.” 

 

“Maybe I just want to inspect your liquor cabinet, make sure you have better taste at home.”

 

This ekes a strangled bark of laughter out of Bond.  “Alright.  I suppose if you’re acting in your official capacity…”  He makes a gesture to have at it, then.

 

Frank shakes his head.  “Seatbelt.”

 

This wrings another reluctant laugh from Bond.   His life is already a wreck, what good will a seatbelt do him?  Still, Bond does as he’s told, Frank’s serious stare implacable.

 

Once Bond’s safely strapped into his seat, it’s fairly anticlimactic to watch Frank ease the car out of park and onto the road.  In another moment, they’re at the A3, and Frank gives him a querying look.

 

“Right,” he offers, and then a few minutes later, “Left” and then “Right” again.  The interior closes around them, sliding by like an Impressionist landscape of deep greens and moon-tinged blues, the black of the road pouring over the windshield, stars like drops of mercury reflected in the glass.

 

Frank doesn’t showboat; he drives with the same graceful, lethal economy Bond had already remarked.  The Audi’s speedometer reaches 120 kilometers, 140, 160 on the long, straight road to Oracabessa, and Bond notes the way Frank handles the big engine, working it organically through the gears, as if he and the machine share a nervous system.  He’s damned good, better than Bond himself.

 

“You been doing this long?”

 

“Since I was 16,” Frank answers, deliberately misinterpreting Bond’s question.

 

“You’ve been picking up strange men in bars since you were 16?” Bond retorts.  Frank might be the better driver, but he’ll never beat Bond in flirtatious brinksmanship.

 

Frank’s laugh sounds like it was surprised out of him, and he treats Bond to a warm, sidelong look.  “Fuck no.  Started that when I was 14,” which ushers in a moment of mutual laughter.

 

Bond sobers suddenly when he realizes that for minutes together he’d forgotten to remember the burning sky shattering against ice and the cold that had seeped into her eyes while her last breath was still a ghost over her pale lips.  What little heat had been raised by the easy laughter and easier banter drains out of Bond, and he stifles a shiver and turns to look out the window at the blurring darkness.

 

Soon enough, they’re winding up the drive to a sprawling, U-shaped villa on a low bluff above a wide, golden beach, gleaming now in the moonlight, silver waves licking at the shore.  Bond directs Frank wordlessly past the valet parking in front of the main building and toward a smaller bungalow tucked into the living darkness of swaying palms and undergrowth that brackets one end of the compound.

 

They park, and Bond leads the way to the bungalow, turning on only a single standing lamp in the corner of the open living space.  Through the sliding glass doors, they can see the beach, and even before Bond opens one of those doors to step through to a veranda overlooking the water, the sound of the ocean is pervasive, like the slow breath of a great beast in deep, deep sleep.

 

“Nice view,” Frank remarks.

 

“Thanks. It’s one of my favorites.”  It’s probably the tequila, or maybe the headache it’s engendered, that loosens Bond’s usual inhibition on personal observations.

 

“The Atlantic in general, or…?”

 

“This beach in particular,” Bond answers, wondering why he’s being so forthcoming.

 

“I prefer the Mediterranean, myself, but I can see the appeal.”

 

Bond glances up to see that Frank is leaning in the open doorway, one arm over his head, weight on the length of his forearm, wrist loose.  The other hand is in his pocket, and there’s an odd expression on his face, almost a wistfulness.  He looks entirely relaxed, which Bond knows, instinctively, is a deception.

 

“Drink?”  Bond offers.  “As you can see, my taste is usually better than what you’ve witnessed of it.”

 

Frank smiles but declines the offer with a dismissive wave of his hand. 

 

Bond helps himself to a whiskey, one of the many tastes he’s acquired from sporadic association with Felix Leiter, and moves to the veranda stairs, easing onto the top step to lean his shoulder against the support post.  He kicks off his sandals and buries his feet in the fine sand of the beach that begins where the second step ends.

 

Shoeless, half-drunk, a dangerous stranger at his back and the unfeeling black ocean murmuring only a few feet in front of him, Bond wonders if this is perhaps the best he can ask of the world now, not peace precisely but a sort of détente.  If he agrees to stop trying, to cease any effort to care about Queen or country or home or the people who had been his only real family, then the world will let him alone to breathe and drink and be.

 

A whisper of bare feet on wood alerts Bond to Frank’s moving up beside him, and Bond realizes he must have lost time during which Frank had taken off his shoes and socks, realizes too that Frank deliberately scuffed the floorboards to telegraph his intention.

 

Bare feet sink into the sand beside Bond’s own as Frank settles his weight beside Bond.  Frank doesn’t crowd him, not even where their broad shoulders take up most of the space between the two posts that frame the stairs.

Bond looks at the delicate blue veins like hieroglyphs on the pale skin of Frank’s feet; he admires the strong knob of the ankle and the strength of tendon and bone as Frank flexes his toes occasionally, leaning back on his arms and letting out a sigh.

 

When Bond turns his head a little to take in Frank’s profile, he sees the other man is looking at the sky.  The wash of lights from the resort has wiped most of them from view, but further out over the dark, uncaring ocean there are brighter satellites playing tag with the crumpled surface of the water.

 

A comfortable silence falls between them, a silence that abides long enough to make Bond suspicious; in his experience, this kind of easy grace between strangers inevitably harbingers some unexpected disaster.

 

“I’m not going to fuck you tonight,” Frank says at last, breaking a silence that had grown tense, at least on Bond’s part.

 

“What makes you think you’re ever going to fuck me?” Bond tips the dregs of the glass into his mouth, licking his lips unnecessarily and catching Frank’s eyes watching him as he swallows.

 

It’s Frank’s turn to offer a shrug, and the French gesture looks natural on him, like he’s a native slumming it with an English accent.

 

“I think it might be something you need.”

 

 _Cocky_ , Bond thinks, though something deep inside of him stirs uneasily at Frank’s confidence and the way he’s touched upon a desire in Bond that Bond himself has refused to recognize.

 

“What I need is sleep,” he says, standing up peremptorily and turning toward the open sliding door.  “You can show yourself out.”

 

“I’ll stay and keep watch,” Frank says to Bond’s back.

 

Bond wonders why Frank thinks he needs protecting, but he’s too tired, his head too tight with an incipient hangover and the crowding memories that threaten to unman him, so he lets it go, saying only, “Do as you please.  The couch pulls out,” before retreating to his en suite bathroom, telling himself he’s not running away, just regrouping.

 

He strips down to his boxer briefs, washes up, avoiding his eyes in the bathroom mirror, and retires to his bed, mosquito netting wrapping the room in gauzy starlight.  Despite the unsettled feeling in his stomach—tequila or uncharacteristic behavior or both making a mess of his system—Bond falls asleep to the muted rhythm of the sea at his door.

 

He wakes up to an explosion of heat and light, the bed shaking, the canopy in flames, air thick with the stench of petrol and cordite and burnt flesh.  Bond rolls out of bed, hits the floor on hands and knees, reaches to the nightstand for his Walther, eyes already scanning the room for a target.

 

He sees only the dim grey of early dawn limning the windowsill and Frank standing at the end of the bed, hands up in the universal gesture of placation.

 

 Frank’s speaking, Bond realizes, even as the words start to make sense.

 

“James, you’re safe.  It’s me, Frank.  It was just a dream.  You were just having a bad dream.”

James rises from his crouch, knees suddenly weak with spent adrenaline and the wrecked machinery of his heart rattling painfully against the cage of his ribs.  His head feels too big and stuck on wrong, and he hears himself gasping even as he reins in his galloping pulse and takes a deep breath, putting the Walther back where he’d found it with hands that betray an unwelcome tremor.

 

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he says formally, not making eye contact, and moves toward the bathroom to piss and splash water on his face.  He lingers stiff-armed against the sink, hoping when he emerges Frank will have returned to the living room, but when he comes out at last, toweling the damp hair at his temple, Frank has pulled back the mosquito netting and is sitting on the side of the bed nearest the bathroom.

 

He’s naked except for a pair of briefs, a state he must have been in when he came into the room expecting trouble, only Bond hadn’t been in any condition to notice then.

 

Now, a tingle of desire mingles with his curiosity as he takes in the scars on Frank’s torso, cataloguing them automatically—gunshot, knife wound, burn, the puckered star of a shrapnel hole, a roughened patch where an abrasion had gone untended until it had festered into infection and been inexpertly debrided.

 

Frank’s body is a map indicating agonies similar to Bond’s own, and Bond wonders if it’s possible to trace the topography of Frank’s skin to some destination other than where he is now, lost and without a working compass, needle spinning wildly as if there is no longer a magnetic north to guide him home.

 

He’s still telling himself it’s a bad idea to get any closer to Frank when Frank holds out a hand, spreads his knees, and says, “Come here.”

 

There’s nothing in Frank’s expression to suggest that he expects rejection, but Bond finds in his words and gesture not an irritating arrogance but a kind of alien comfort. 

 

He’s across the floor without having consciously chosen to move, his cold hand sliding into Frank’s.  The callused palm and the heat and strength of his hand closing around Bond’s forces a shuddering breath out of Bond.  Despite that Frank has his hand in a sure grip and their knees are now touching, that Frank’s cock is growing visibly hard beneath his tight briefs, Frank doesn’t make any other move, instead looking up into Bond’s face, eyes searching for something.

 

“If it’s consent you’re after, that’s a yes,” Bond says at last, growing increasingly uncomfortable under Frank’s penetrative gaze.  He cups his own hard cock for emphasis.

 

Frank still says nothing, still doesn’t touch him except where they’re now holding hands, the initial invitation having turned into a kind of sweet keeping that Bond cannot abide.  He tries to pull his hand away, and only then does Frank lift his other hand to rest his fingertips in the dip of Bond’s back and lean forward, eyes canting upward to maintain contact as he sucks a kiss into the flat, hard space between Bond’s breasts.

 

Bond’s breath stutters in his chest, and he sways, suddenly weak under the twin assault of Frank’s hot tongue and his own burning need.  He makes a sound he’ll later deny, a breathy surrendering sound that causes Frank’s arm to tense where he has Bond around the waist, and when Frank says, “I’ve got you,” against his breastbone, Bond swallows against the ache in his throat. 

 

He feels cold everywhere but in the places where Frank’s mouth and his hands touch him, and the contrast raises a full-body shiver that wracks him.

 

“Fuck,” Bond breathes, hating the coldness in his fingers where they brush against Frank’s cheek and his traitorous breath that shivers out of him and the way Frank’s hand against his back feels like it’s leaving a brand.

Wrenching his hand free of Frank’s, he uses both hands against Frank’s shoulders to push the other man back onto the bed, and without giving Frank a moment to adjust to the new position, Bond brings one knee up to take his weight on the edge of the mattress, forcing Frank to scoot backwards or risk being struck in a decidedly counter-productive place.

 

He smirks up at Bond, taunting him, saying, _Well then, what are you waiting for?_

 

Bond obliterates the expression with a brutal kiss.  Though Bond can feel Frank’s strength in the hands that bracket his shoulder blades and in the thighs that rise to clench Bond’s hips, urging contact, Frank lets Bond take control of the kiss, lets him plunge his tongue into his mouth, nip his lower lip, scrape his teeth along the stubble of his jaw and fasten on one delicate earlobe.

 

Damp, hot breath explodes against Bond’s ear as Frank gasps, and his lips pause in their work to indulge a feral grin.  He releases Frank’s ear only to bite him at the join of his neck and shoulder, and Frank’s hips buck up against Bond’s, bringing their clothed cocks together in a way that has them pulling apart to strip themselves out of their briefs before they resume their earlier positions, Bond looming between Frank’s legs, Frank bent-kneed, abdomen taut, cock jutting up from a nest of ash-blonde curls. 

 

He’s beautiful in the way of a perfectly crafted blade made for a single purpose, and Bond lets his mind remember the many other weapons he’s bedded in his time, men and women who’d made their bodies into instruments of death.

 

For his part, Frank makes no secret of his desire as he rakes his eyes along Bond’s body from cock to abdomen to chest, reversing the expected order and coming to rest at last on Bond’s face. Bond withstands once more an examination that is both strangely flattering and profoundly unsettling, until he begins to recognize something he thinks might be pity in Frank’s eyes.

 

It’s the first mistake Frank’s made, and Bond isn’t the kind of man to let such weakness go unpunished.

 

Bond smiles. 

 

It’s not a friendly smile but the kind a shark wears—perpetual, hungry, devoid of actual feeling.  Down in the cold, dark depths of the ocean, the shark glides eternally, and Bond feels the remoteness of it, the killer’s instinct, turning him into nothing but empty appetite.  He wants to devour every bit of warmth Frank offers, leaving him bleeding and drowning in that blind, chilling darkness.

 

The shift in Bond’s expression pulls a sigh out of Frank, and then Bond is on his back with Frank’s knees pinning his upper arms, his ass planted just beneath his sternum, and a steely forearm across his throat constricting his breath.

 

 _You’re good_ , he might say, if his larynx weren’t being crushed.  As it is, he wheezes out a shallow chuckle before attempting to use his lower body to unseat Frank.

 

But the man is lithe and practiced, a balanced rider, and as spots start to crowd Bond’s vision, he abandons the effort.

 

The forearm eases up on his throat but isn’t withdrawn.

 

“Do we understand each other?” Frank asks, and though his expression is pleasant enough, there is something flat in his eyes akin to Bond’s earlier shark’s grin.

 

Bond nods against Frank’s forearm, and Frank slides his knees off of Bond’s arms, lifts his weight from Bond’s belly, sliding back until he’s once more straddling Bond rather than strangling him.

 

“Then we can get back to this,” Frank says, smiling wickedly and dipping his pelvis to slide his cock the length of Bond’s.

 

The last of Bond’s resistance drains from him as he closes his eyes against the sensation of being held down, being used, Frank taking his pleasure, setting the rhythm, sucking love marks into Bond’s neck that he’ll be unable to hide.

 

As Bond begins to think they’re going to come like this, frotting like teenagers, Frank slows and then stops the motion, which forces Bond to pry his heavy lids open and look at the man on top of him.

 

Frank’s fair skin is flushed with exertion, his hair damp at the temples, a fine mist of sweat raising a glow along his shoulders and upper arms.  His eyes are dark with desire, his lips abused from being dragged along Bond’s stubbled jaw.  Frank looks thoroughly debauched, and Bond can only imagine how he himself must look.

 

“What do you want?” Frank asks, voice even, though a fine tremor through the muscles in his arms, a ticking of the muscles in his jaw indicate that he’s not as uninvested in Bond’s answer as he might be trying to sound.

 

“Thought you weren’t going to fuck me tonight,” Bond observes, matching Frank’s neutral tone with some effort.

 

“I don’t _have_ to,” Frank answers, pushing himself up a little more to look down Bond’s body at his cock.  He grins, tongue darting out to touch his lower lip.  “There are other things we can do to relieve our…tension.”

 

Bond imagines it:  imagines sliding to the edge of the bed so that Frank can drop to his knees beside it, swallow Bond’s cock down, his red lips stretching obscenely, the heat and suction of it, the unbearable inferno.  The thought of Frank sucking him off makes his cock jump and the muscles of his belly twitch.

 

But as much as the fancy appeals to him, Bond has a more pressing need; already his chest and stomach are cooling in the evening breeze wafting in from the screened window; already a chill is creeping outward from his core, from the hollow dead lump in his chest to his quickly pilling skin.

 

“Fuck me,” he says, voice breaking over the second word, suiting action to command by wrapping his hand around Frank’s neck and yanking him roughly down.

 

Frank lands on him deliberately, and Bond luxuriates in the crushing weight of him, the way the air is slowly squeezed from his lungs, the way he has to struggle to fill them again.  The heat is oppressive here, their mingled sweat trapped between them, hot breath gusting across his jaw.  It’s the warmest he’s felt in days.

 

Then Frank is moving again, biting Bond’s neck, moving to his nipples to suck and rough them with his tongue, downward to the crease of his thigh and then to the sensitive skin behind his balls.

 

Bond moans at the contact and then grunts when Frank spreads Bond’s thighs to accommodate his shoulders and at the same time lays his broad, flat tongue along that same place and licks upward, suckling one ball and then the other until Bond is actually groaning, one long, low, continuous betrayal of need.

 

When Frank moves still further down to trace the edge of Bond’s puckered hole, Bond’s hips buck off the bed and he swears viciously, tongue twisting over familiar words as a strong hand presses down on his belly.  The other hand parts his cheeks so that Frank can drive his tongue into the loosened opening, past the muscle and upward, not far enough to offer real relief from the heat building and building inside of Bond, just enough to make him squirm on that single point of fire, the seeking flame of Frank’s tongue making Bond clench his teeth to keep from begging.

 

Frank ceases his delving to suck a searing love mark into the sensitive skin of Bond’s inner thigh, and Bond says, “Enough.  Fuck me.”

 

Frank raises a glistening mouth and gives Bond a searching look, far too composed for Bond’s comfort.  “What, like this?”

 

Bond nods.  He’s not asking a third time; repetition is too much like pleading.

 

“No,” Frank says decisively, sliding to his feet and prowling out of the room. 

 

He’s back moments later with a small, clear plastic bottle of lube and a condom, which he tosses on the bed casually, as though he’s not sporting an impressive erection himself and hasn’t just spent ten minutes taking Bond apart with his tongue.

 

Bond feels suddenly vulnerable, totally exposed in a way he hasn’t felt since he was a boy first learning the rules of this game.  Avoiding Frank’s eyes, he rolls over and kneels in a single fluid surge, resting his forearms flat against the bed.  He imagines how he must look, ass in the air, hole still wet with Frank’s earlier work.  There couldn’t be a clearer invitation, and despite the fact that he’s just presented himself to be mounted like a bitch in heat, he feels like he’s regained control, especially when he hears Frank release a shaking sigh and finally move.

 

Bond feels the mattress dip, feels the brush of Frank’s legs against his calves and then his thighs.  He hears the quiet _thwock_ of the lube cap, and he holds himself still as a finger traces his opening and then slides inside of him, warm despite the cool lubricant.  A second finger, then a third, Frank’s fingers deft and demanding, punching a grunt out of Bond when he quirks his fingers and strikes the sweet spot.

 

At last there’s the sound of tearing foil and then a pause, and finally a hand hot against his lower back, the only warning for what comes next.  Bond breathes around the initial breach but then holds his breath, caught there on the broad head of Frank’s cock, waiting, waiting, wanting to move, to push back against Frank’s intrusion or pull away from it.

 

Then Frank is sliding inside, one long, slow, deliberate motion that fills Bond with impossible heat even as he feels the furnace of Frank’s body against the back of his legs and his ass.  He groans as Frank moves his hand to grasp both of Bond’s hips, to pull him up even closer and angle hips so that he can rock against the place inside Bond that shatters Bond’s control.

 

Bond shouts—a wordless sound of want—and then Frank finally lets go of his own control, pounding relentlessly into Bond, manhandling him with a bruising grip to get him right where he wants him, pushing Bond away and pulling him back in time with Frank’s punishing thrusts.

 

Grunts punctuated by the wet slap of skin drown out the constant chant of the ocean at the door, and Bond is close, so close, cursing and gasping and sweating in the heat building between them, and then Frank abandons his grip on Bond’s hip to wrap his hot, callused hand around Bond’s cock, and Bond’s coming apart, something in him expanding like a shaped charge, blooming out from the core of him to annihilate him utterly, plunging him into a breathing darkness as though he’s been submerged in the dense water of a salty inland sea.

 

He blinks back into the world with sweat stinging his eyes, a cramp knotting his left thigh, and a satisfying ache in his ass that pulses in time with his slowly diminishing heartbeat.

 

Frank is coming back into the room holding a wet cloth when Bond rolls carefully onto his back, hiding a wince as his ass takes the weight.  It occurs to him that it was two M’s ago when he last let another man fuck him, and that thought—that M is gone, that she won’t be there to disapprove of Bond’s latest personal apocalypse—dissipates the warm afterglow of good sex, leaving him feeling mostly damp and cold.

 

Frank offers Bond the cloth wordlessly, and Bond nods his gratitude, mopping at his belly and the short hairs around his flaccid cock even as he sits up, moves to the edge of the bed, rises, and disappears into the bathroom himself.

 

He takes a hot shower, half expecting Frank to join him, half hoping the other man will be gone when he gets out.  The steamed up mirror shows him only a blurry shadow of himself, for which he’s infinitely grateful.  When he returns to the room wearing a towel slung low around his hips, using a second to towel-dry his hair, Frank has pulled the soiled coverlet off of the bed and is sitting in his briefs as though the last hour had never happened.

 

Daylight has crept into the room and with it a warm beach breeze that ruffles the damp hair on Bond’s chest, making him tense against a shiver.

 

Frank stands when he sees Bond’s expression.  “I can stay.”

 

Bond shrugs.  “If you like.”  But Bond would prefer he didn’t.  He wants no more entanglements, no more warm feelings.  He’s coming to understand that the cold is a part of him now, and he’s going to have to embrace it as his natural state.

 

“For a day,” Frank adds, a wry grin suggesting that he’s guessed at Bond’s unspoken hesitation.

 

Hope flaring in his chest, wondering if there can be in this life, at least, some temporary respite for him, Bond smiles at Frank and says, “Coffee?”

 

And if that coffee is bitter and burns his tongue, at least Bond knows he’s still alive, the same way Frank reminds him after breakfast against the sliding door and then again in their secluded lagoon at noon-time, the hungry gulls raucous in the sky around them, and then one last time, as the sun sets, and Frank yields to Bond, holding the porch railing and spreading his legs, letting Bond slide into him long and slow, a languid pace born of exhaustion and the heavy weight of the day’s heat.

 

At last, in the restless dark, the cool wind raising goose-bumps on Bond’s bare arms, he sees Frank out, stopping where the stone walk gives way to a verge of sand before morphing to the gravel parking spot where Frank’s sleek machine gathers dark and light.

 

Bond digs his toes into the sand, grateful to feel the residual heat of the day there, and glad, too, of the warmth in Frank’s eyes as he curls his lips up in a knowing smile and offers Bond a farewell gesture before disappearing behind the canopy of stars reflected in the windshield of his car.

 

Bond turns back, enters the bungalow, ignoring the yawning emptiness of the space but listening to the sound of the engine until he can no longer distinguish it from the unquiet night.

 

Then he goes to the bar, pours himself a drink, and lets it warm him on the way down.  It’s a weak heat, but it’s the best he can do, and he takes the bottle out to the veranda to sit on the steps, watching the silver waves curl over into the black water and feeling the bruises on his hips, the blood-blooms on his neck and chest and thighs, the steady ache in his ass.  There’s residual heat when he remembers Frank’s hands and lips and cock, Frank’s laugh and the way he sometimes surprised Bond with his wit or with his silence.  Heat when he recalls surrendering at last to a gentle kiss just before Frank put on his clothes to leave.

 

There are worse things for building a fire than whiskey and memories, Bond guesses, and with them, he thinks he might just keep warm.

**Author's Note:**

> Oracabessa is the little town up the road from Port Maria, Jamaica, where Ian Fleming had his estate, Goldeneye, and from which he took the inspiration for _Dr. No_ , _Live and Let Die_ , _The Man with the Golden Gun_ , and the short story, "Octopussy." Goldeneye is now a resort, so that's one of the homages in this story to Fleming's Jamaica. Another is the "undertaker's wind." I can't claim a lick of credit for that phrase.


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